Michael Moore makes triumphant Cannes return with provocative doc 'Sicko'

"Sicko," Michael Moore's ferocious and funny attack on the U.S. health care system, got a warm welcome at the Cannes Film festival Saturday. At home, it has started a firestorm.

The movie doesn't open until late June, but it has already been criticized by conservative politicians and sparked a U.S. government investigation that could land Moore a fine or jail time.

"I know the storm awaits me back in the United States," said Moore as he absorbed the enthusiastic response of critics and journalists after the film's first Cannes screening. Moore held a private showing Tuesday in New York for a group of ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers featured in the film.

Moore's previous films were praised and reviled in equal measure. Americans will likely be just as divided by "Sicko" _ especially scenes in which Moore takes the sick 9/11 rescuers to Cuba for treatment.

The trip led the U.S. Treasury Department to investigate Moore for possibly breaking the U.S. trade and travel embargo on Cuba.

Some have said the investigation is giving the film valuable free publicity. Not Moore.

"I'm the one who's personally being investigated, and I'm the one who's personally liable for potential fines or jail, so I don't take it as lightly," he said.

On the advice of lawyers, the filmmakers spirited a master copy of "Sicko" outside the United States in case the government tries to seize it. As for whether the inquiry could prevent the film opening in the U.S. as planned on June 29, Moore said: "We haven't even discussed that possibility."

Moore is a Cannes favorite. His last film, the war-on-terror documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, in 2004. "Sicko" is screening out of competition _ Moore joked that he didn't want to appear like a "typical American" by greedily seeking another trophy.

Moore says he knows "Sicko" will have enemies, especially within the Bush administration and the health insurers he accuses of abandoning sick Americans.

Ironically, given its stormy reception, Moore says he wanted "Sicko" to be a quieter and more reflective movie than the rabble-rousing "Bowling For Columbine" or "Fahrenheit 9/11."

There are no scenes of confrontation to match Moore's pigeonholing of politicians in "Fahrenheit 9/11" to ask whether they would send their children to Iraq.

Instead, there are ordinary Americans telling heart-wrenching stories of being refused vital treatment. Moore also travels to Canada, Britain and France to take a look _ possibly rose-tinted _ at their systems of socialized medicine.

"I decided to make a different film this time," Moore said. "I wanted a different tone and I wanted to say things in a different way.

"I got tired of all the yelling and screaming and not getting anywhere."

The film's emotional climax is a brilliant _ and, some will say, brilliantly manipulative _ sequence in which Moore and the New York rescue workers visit a Cuban hospital.

"The Cuba stuff is incendiary," said Boston Globe critic Peter Brunette, who predicted a savage response from some quarters in the United States.

Moore says the criticism of the Cuba trip is misplaced. He said he intended to take the workers to Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base on the island where terror suspects are held _ and, the film claims, receive top-notch medical care.

"The point was not to go to Cuba but to go to America, to go to American soil ... being in Cuba was just an accident in a sense," he said.

Moore said he hoped audiences would focus on the film's message, not the controversy. He said it is both "a call to action" and a plea for a better, friendlier society.

"The bigger issue in the film is, who are we as a people?" Moore said.

"Why would we allow nearly 50 million Americans to go without any kind of health coverage ... That's not America. That's not the America I want to see exist."

The film includes what Moore hopes is an example of generosity of spirit. When the director found out that the Moore-bashing Web site moorewatch.com would have to close because webmaster Jim Kenefick needed money to pay his sick wife's medical bills, he sent an anonymous check for US$12,000 (euro8,900).

Moore said he planned to call Kenefick on Saturday before the film's evening premiere to identify himself as the benefactor. But Kenefick, tipped off by media reports, appeared unimpressed.

"He paid US$12,000 so that you, the press, would focus on what a 'nice guy' he is and in the same breath, make me look like a jerk," Kenefick wrote on the site _ which is still running.